Sunday's the time to spring forward

For the third year in a row, the nation is getting a jump on the spring season, thanks to the arrival of daylight-saving time. For the record, it starts at 2 a.m. on Sunday. As the saying goes, it's time to "spring forward." Don't fall back to sleep on Sunday morning; if you forget to push your clocks ahead, it could throw your schedule off.

Daylight-saving time doesn't actually save any daylight. What it does is move the daylight from morning to evening, allowing us to get an extra hour of light when we're commuting home from work.

By now, Americans should be accustomed to the March start of daylight-saving time, thanks to a provision in the U.S. Energy Act of 2005 that permanently extended the duration of daylight-saving time by four weeks beginning in 2007. Instead of beginning on the first Sunday in April - as it did since 1966- daylight-saving time now starts on the second Sunday in March. Daylight-saving time now ends on the first Sunday in November, rather than the last Sunday of October.

It's easy to be forgetful, however, especially when there's still some snow on the ground. It's been a long, hard winter and we're all anxious to leave it behind. Forecasters predict that we may get that long-awaited taste of spring this weekend with temperatures moving up into the "seasonal" category.

That means we'll see kids outside on bikes and skateboards, but it will be a bit longer before the grass turns green and the flowers pop out of the ground. Still, the end of this stubborn winter season is almost upon us. And that's something to cheer about.

The arrival of daylight-saving time also presents us with a reminder to take care of some other important chores such as replacing batteries in smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors. And if your house is missing the alarms, it's time to visit the hardware store and buy them.